The Self-Evidence of Human Rights: Origins and Limits of an Idea
ISBN
978-0-19-882475-6
Type
book section
Date Issued
2019
Author(s)
Abstract
The chapter is a comment on Lynn Hunt’s reconsideration, in the same volume ("The Limits of Human Rights", Oxford University Press 2019), of a crucial moment in the history of human rights when in North America and in France for the first time a "self-evidence" of certain rights of "all men" was claimed in constitutional discourse and documents, and a fundamental shift occurred in the explanation of human rights from a religious framework toward a secular one. The first part of the comment is devoted to the drafting history of the 1776 Declaration of Independence of the United States and to the meaning of the claim to "self-evidence" in the Declaration. In a second part, the author returns to Lynn Hunt’s analysis of the limitations of the actual enjoyment of rights in eighteenth century North America and France. The third part of the comment deals with the importance, or rather unimportance, of the notion of the self-evidence of human rights in the present age. It is argued that the idea of self-evidence proclaimed in 1776 failed to find general recognition, so that we must search for a new credible foundation of universal human rights.
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
HSG Profile Area
None
Book title
The Limits of Human Rights
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Publisher place
Oxford / New York
Start page
55
End page
68
Pages
14
Division(s)
Eprints ID
259173
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Name
Fassbender Self-Evidence of Human Rights 2019.pdf
Size
1.3 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
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